Ratzinger Prize winners
for 2012 formally announced
Sept. 28, 2012
The winners of the second edition of the Ratzinger Prize (Premio Ratzinger) in Theology were officially announced Friday: - French philosopher Rémi Brague and American patrologist Fr. Brian E. Daley S.J. The award will be conferred on the winners on Oct. 20, 2012, during the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization.
Rémi Brague, born 1947, married and father of four, is professor emeritus of medieval and Arabic philosophy at the University of Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris I) and professor of philosophy of the European religions (Romano Guardini Chair) at the Ludwig- Maximilian University in Munich.
Brian E. Daley, S.J., is the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana). He is a contributor to the English edition of
Communio magazine, founded by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri De Lubac and Joseph Ratzinger.
The Ratzinger Prize has been called the “Nobel of Theology” and is handed out by the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation. Pope Benedict XVI himself approved the launch of the Foundation in 2010, following keen requests from academics, philosophers and theologians worldwide.
The aim of the foundation is to “promote the publication, distribution and study of the writings of former university professor Joseph Ratzinger”. It finances its activities through the publication and sale of Ratzinger’s works.
At the same time, the Holy Father decided to establish a Prize in Theology, in recognition of the work undertaken by scholars in three specific areas: Sacred Scripture study, Patristics and Fundamental Theology.
The first recipients of the award, in 2011, were: Italian Professor Dr. Manlio Simonetti, an expert in Ancient Christian Studies and Patristic Biblical Interpretation (relating to the Church Fathers), who used to teach at Rome's La Sapienza University; the Reverend Father Professor Dr. Olegario González de Cardedal, a Spanish priest and Professor specializing in Dogmatic and Fundamental Theology at the Pontifical University of Salamanca in Spain; and the Rev. Fr. Professor Dr. Maximilian Heim, a German, and Abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Heiligenkreuz (Holy Cross) near Vienna, where he teaches dogmatic and fundamental theology at the University of Heiligenkreuz.
As in 2011, the Pope himself will present the awards.
Biography of the 2012
Ratzinger Prize winners
Rémi Brague, born 1947, married and father of four, is professor emeritus of medieval and Arabic philosophy at the University Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris I) and professor of philosophy of the European religions (Romano Guardini Chair) at the Ludwig- Maximilian University in Munich.
He studied philosophy and the classical languages at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and later Hebrew and Arabic. He taught philosophy for two years at the University of Burgundy (Dijon), then twenty years at the Sorbonne. He has taught at Munich since 2002. He was a visiting professor in Penn State, Boston (B.U. and B.C.), Lausanne, Milan, Pamplona.
He is the author of Eccentric Culture (South Bend, 2002), The Wisdom of the World (Chicago, 2003), The Law of God (Chicago, 2007), The Legend of the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2009), On the God of the Christians (South Bend, 2012).
Rémi Brague is a member of the Institut de France (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques)
[The same academy to which Joseph Ratzinger was elected in 1992, taking over the seat vacated by Russian physicist and peace activist Andrei Sakharov.]
Brian E. Daley, S.J., is the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana). A 1961 graduate of Fordham University (New York), he studied ancient history and philosophy at Merton College, Oxford, from 1961 to 1964, then entered the Society of Jesus.
After theological studies in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was ordained priest on 25 July 1970, he returned to Oxford to do a D. Phil. in the Faculty of Theology, from 1972 until 1978. He then taught historical theology for eighteen years at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before moving to Notre Dame in 1996.
He is the author of The Hope of the Early Church (Cambridge, 1991; Hendrickson, 2002); On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies (St. Vladimir’s, 1998), and Gregory of Nazianzus (Routledge, 2006), as well as many articles. He is also the translator of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy. The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor (Ignatius, 2003). Fr. Daley is the executive secretary of the Catholic-Orthodox Consultation for North America.
CONFERRAL OF THE FIRST "RATZINGER PRIZES"
Clementine Hall
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Top photo: Prof. Simonetti receives his prize. Nottom panel, left: Fr. Gonzalez, and right, Abbot Heim, receiving theirs.
Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words:
Eminences,
Venerated Brothers.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen:
First of all, i wish to express my joy and gratitude for the fact that by awarding these prizes in theology, the Foundation which carries my name is publicly acknowledging the work of a lifetime by two great theologians and is giving a sign of encouragement to a theologian from a younger generation to proceed along the path he has taken.
A common bond over many decades links me to Prof. Gonzalez de Cardedal. Both of us started with St. Bonaventure and allowed him to show us the direction we would take.
In his long life as a scholar, Prof. Gonzalez has dealt with all the great themes of theology, not simply reflecting on them or discussing them around a table, but always confronting the drama of our time, living and even suffering in a very personal way all the great questions about the faith, and therefore, the questions of men today.
Thus, the words of faith are not a thing of the past: in his works, they truly become contemporaneous with us.
Professor Simonetti has opened to us the world of the [Church] Fathers in a new way. By showing us, from the historical point of view, and with precision and care, what the Fathers tell us, they become persons who are contemporaneous with us, who speak to us.
Fr. Maximilian Heim was recently elected abbot of the Manastery of Heiligenkreuz near Vienna - a monastery that is rich in tradition - taking on the task of actualizing the abbey's great history and leading it towards the future.
In this, I hope that the work he has done on my theology, which he has given us [the book Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology], may be useful to him, and that Heiligenkreuz may, in our time, further develop monastic theology, which has always accompanied the theology taught in universities, constituting with it the entirety of Western theology.
It is not, however, my task to present a laudatio of the prize winners, which has already been done competently by Cardinal Ruini. But perhaps this is an occasion to dedicate ourselves for a moment to the fundamental question of what theology really is.
Theology is the science of faith, tradition tells us. But immediately the question arises: Is this really possible? Or is this not a contradiction in itself? Is not science the opposite of faith? Does not faith cease to be faith when it becomes science? And does not science cease to be science when it is ordered or even subordinated to faith?
Such questions, which were already serious issues in medieval theology, have become even more compelling with the modern concept of science, and at first glance, would seem to be unsolvable.
It is therefore understandable why, in the modern age, theology in vast areas has retreated primarily to the historical, for the purpose of showing its scientific seriousness. And it is necessary to acknowledge with gratitude that many great works have been realized this way that have given the Christian message new light, and capable of making visible its intimate richness. Nonetheless, if theology retreats completely to the past, it would leave faith in darkness.
In a second phase, there was a focus on praxis, to show how theology, combined with psychology and sociology, could be a useful science that can give concrete directions for life. This, too, is important, but if the basis of theology - faith - is not at the same time the object of thought, if praxis becomes self-referential only, or lives only on what it borrows from human sciences, then praxis becomes empty and without a foundation.
These ways, therefore, are not sufficient. As much as they are useful and important, they become subterfuges if they do not provide answers to the true question. Which is: What we believe in - is it true or not?
In theology, the question of truth is in play: it is its ultimate and essential foundation. A statement by Tertullian can take us a step farther: he wrote that Christ did not say "I am custom" but "I am the Truth". Non consuetudo sed veritas (Virg. 1,1).
Christian Gnilka has shown that the concept of 'consuetudo' could refer to the pagan religions which, by their nature, were not faiths, but 'custom': they did what was always done, they observed traditional forms of worship and expected to continue doing so as their proper relationship with the mysterious world of the divine.
The revolutionary aspect of Christianity in the world of antiquity was precisely its rupture with 'custom' for the love of truth. Tertullian speaks here above all on the basis of the Gospel of St. John, in which we find the other fundamental interpretation of the Christian faith which is expressed in the designation of Christ as Logos.
If Christ is Logos, truth, man should respond to him with his own logos, his reason. In order to get to Christ, he must do so along the way of truth. He must open himself up to the Logos, to Creative Reason, from which his own reason comes, and to which reason sends him back.
From here, one can understand that Christian faith, by its very nature, must inspire theology - it must question itself on the reasonableness of faith, but because the concepts of reason and of science encompass many dimensions, the concrete nature of the link between faith and reason had to be and must always be freshly examined in depth.
However clear the fundamental link among Logos, truth and faith is presented in Christianity, the concrete form of that link has provoked and will always provoke new questions. Clearly, on this occasion, this question, which has occupied and will occupy all generations, cannot be treated in detail, not even in its major lines.
I only wish to make a very small remark. St. Bonaventure, in the prologue to his Comments on the Sentenze, wrote about the double use of reason - one which is irreconcilable with the nature of faith, the other which belongs to the very nature of faith.
There exists, he said, a violentia rationis, the despotism of reason which makes itself the supreme and ultimate judge of everything. This kind of use for reason is certainly impossible where faith is concerned. What did Bonaventure mean with this?
A passage from Psalm 95 (v 9) can show us what he meant. God tells his people: "In the desert your ancestors tested me; they tried me though they had seen my works".
Here, there is a reference to a double encounter with God. They had 'seen', but this was not enough for them - they would put God to the test. They would subject him to experiment. He would be placed, we might say, under interrogation, he would have to submit himself to an experimental procedure.
In the modern age, this way of using reason has reached its peak in the field of natural sciences. Today, experimental reason widely appears to be the only form of rationality that is considered scientific. What cannot be scientifically verified or proven false is excluded from the field of science. Under such a condition, great works have been achieved, as we know. And no one can seriously doubt that such progress is right and necessary in terms of knowledge of nature and her laws.
Nonetheless there is a limit to this type of using reason: God is not an object of human experimentation. He is the Subject and manifests himself only in a person-to-person relationship - this is part of the essence of his nature.
In this perspective, Bonaventure indicates a second use of reason which is valid in the 'personal' area, for the great questions of human beings themselves. Love wishes to know the beloved better. Love, true love, does not make one blind but seeing. And part of this is the thirst for knowledge, for a true knowledge of the other.
For this, the Fathers of the Church found precursors and forerunners of Christianity - outside the world of revelation of Israel - not in the area of traditional religions, but in men who were seeking God, who were in search of truth, in the 'philosophers' - persons who thirsted for truth and were therefore on the way towards God.
When this use of reason is not present, then the great questions of mankind will fall outside the field of reason and will be consigned to irrationality. That is why an authentic theology is so important.
Correct faith orients reason and opens it to the divine, so that, guided by love for the truth, reason can know God from much nearer. The initiative for this way is with God, who has placed in the human heart a yearning for his face.
Therefore part of theology is, on the one hand, the humility that lets one be 'touched' by God, and on the other, the discipline which is linked to the order of reason, which keeps love from being blind, and which helps develop its visual power.
I am well aware that all this has not answered the question on the possibilities and the task of correct theology, but has only highlighted the greatness of the challenge inherent in the nature of theology.
Nonetheless, it is such a challenge that man needs because it spurs us to open up our reason by asking ourselves about truth itself, about the face of God.
And that is why we are grateful to the prize-winners who have shown in their work that reason, walking along the path blazed by faith, is not an alienated reason, but reason that corresponds to their elevated vocation. Thank you..
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/09/2012 14:39]